There are many options available for conducting your benchmarking study. From traditional paper surveys to sophisticated online platforms, there’s certainly no shortage of choices. When our clients are asked why they chose us, or what they like most about our service, the most common answers we hear relate to the level of consulting and service they receive.
While we are thrilled to know that our services are supporting our clients’ needs, the technology aspects that seamlessly occur “in the background” are a key factor in our ability to deliver the solutions they rely upon. It’s the technology behind the tool that makes Stack-up™ the intuitive, reliable and powerful tool it is.
The Architecture
Like any well-built structure, a strong, reliable foundation provides the support for all of the components of our platform. Our benchmarking solutions are built on the ASP.NET framework using C# language programming, both of which are known throughout the software development community for their proven stability and security. All of our survey data is managed in Microsoft SQL Server using our proprietary single tenant database architecture. This means each of our customers has their own, secure database to house their survey data and ensures that another customer never has access to it. Our database and application architecture also makes it simple to move a database to another, higher-performing server should a usage spike call for it, keeping systems responsive and moving quickly for each and every user with virtually no down time.
Security
Data breaches, viruses and bugs continue to make headlines as servers around the world are attacked on a daily basis. We understand that data security is essential to encouraging participation in benchmarking studies where sensitive financial and operational data is managed. We have taken every precaution to build a solid security infrastructure to protect your data using state of the art industry best practices. All surveys are accessed using HTTPS (Secure Hypertext Transfer Protocol), a secure means of delivering information via the web. All interactions between the client’s web browser and the survey platform are encrypted using strong SSL (Secure Socket Layer) encryption. Each survey platform is provided with their own, unique SSL certification. In addition to the benefits outlined earlier, our databases built on Microsoft SQL Server also employ data encryption to protect your information when stored in our secure offsite backups. This means that even if an unauthorized user were able to access your database, they wouldn’t be able to access any of the data.
Accessibility
When it comes to usability, time and again, our platform comes out on top. Offering a simple means of access, survey users are able to enter our platform through their organization’s website so members don’t need a separate login. Single Sign On (or SSO) helps users feel more confident that the survey is part of an organization’s offering. The SSO offering from Dynamic Benchmarking is quite robust allowing the organization to establish business ‘rules’ that control access such as requiring purchases, offering discounts, delivering different surveys to defined groups of users and more. SSO is an optional feature but does contribute to a seamless member experience. Dynamic Benchmarking provides logging and monitoring of each customer solution that shows login and user activity while on the platform. .
Reporting
By far, one of the favorite features of our platform for both organizations and their individual members is our customizable, on-demand reports and charts. We work with each survey owner to create charts and graphs that show data in a meaningful way that best suits their unique purposes and converts complex data into easy to digest charts and graphs. All of the hard work is done ahead of time so users simply download the charts and get personalized results that are easy to understand. We also understand the importance of data accuracy and anonymity, which is why we deliver all survey results in percentiles rather than averages so results aren’t skewed by single, or even multiple, extreme entries.
Dynamic Benchmarking is much more than a simple survey platform. We build our solutions to encourage interactivity for survey participants. We believe that a picture is worth a thousand words, and are continually striving to enhance our technology to make it easier for users to interpret complicated data with images and charts. We welcome and actively seek user feedback as we continually strive to create the best interactive benchmarking solution available.